Today's News: Our Take - NBC's Pulled Hannibal Episode Will Air as a Web Series

Thursday

Apr 25, 2013 at 1:11 PM

NBCpulled the fourth episode of Hannibal last week in the wake of the deadly Boston Marathon bombings, but fans can still watch the episode online. The hour-long episode, called "Ceuf," is available as a six-part web series on NBC.com.The central ...

TV Guide

NBC pulled the fourth episode of Hannibal last week in the wake of the deadly Boston Marathon bombings, but fans can still watch the episode online. The hour-long episode, called "Ceuf," is available as a six-part web series on NBC.com.

The central plotline of the yanked episode, called "Ceuf," featured guest star Molly Shannon as a teacher who is brainwashing children and encouraging them to kill other kids. But some of the more stomach-churning scenes have been edited out of the online version, which now primarily focuses on the relationship between Dr. Hannibal Lecter (Mads Mikkelsen) and Abigail Hobbs (Kacey Rohl). The full original version will still air in international markets.

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"We have cannibalized one of our episodes," creator Bryan Fuller quips in a videotaped message ahead of the series. "As the series goes on, this relationship gets much more complicated and becomes a load-bearing element of our storytelling. So we wanted to make sure that you have all the scenes in order to follow the story along, as we pulled the episode in its entirety out of sensitivities to some of the subject matter that's contained within the episode."

Watch Fuller's message and the first part of the web series below. Do you think NBC made the right call?

Hannibal will air its fifth episode Thursday at 10/9c.

View original NBC's Pulled Hannibal Episode Will Air as a Web Series at TVGuide.com